GRANOLA ... FOR OLD TIMES’ SAKE

Some modern riffs on ’60s classic check all the boxes for your health needs

One thing I find interesting is how foods shift with eating trends and granola is a perfect example of how a food morphs over time.

Invented by James Caleb Jackson in 1863 and named “granula,” the first cold breakfast cereal was made out of graham flour dough, rolled into sheets and baked.

The sheets were broken into smaller pieces, then baked and broken again into smaller pieces. It was reported as being jawbreaking when dry and had to be soaked overnight before eating.

A decade or so later, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (yes, the inventor of corn flakes and a proponent of progressive health reform and the clean living movement) started to produce his own granula, substituting flaked oats for ease of chewing. When Jackson sued him, Kellogg renamed his product “granola.”

Fast forward to the 1960s: Granola was revived by Layton Gentry who Time Magazine called “Johnny Granola Seed.”

Commercially, there was Pet Milk’s Heartland Natural Cereal, followed quickly by Quaker 100% Natural Granola. Gentry threatened to sue Quaker and the name was changed to Harvest Crunch.

That’s the commercial history of granola, but there is also another history.

Any natural foods, back-to-theland or commune cookbook had a recipe for making vast quantities of granola.

It was perfectly portable and well suited for communal living, sit-ins, be-ins and revolutionaries. Remember when “granola head” or “a crunchy granola” were derogatory terms?

I was one of those “granola heads,” swept into the tide of granola by a local health food store named Sunshine.

Saying “health food store” seems so quaint now. It was scooped up from a bin and in the spirit of the counterculture, the recipe was taped to the bin.

I made it and I made variations. That recipe was the inspiration for this column.

Granola with plain yogurt was dinner, and I kind of miss those days.

Thirty years later, granola can be gluten free, keto, paleo, vegan or made from the pulp of juiced vegetables as long as it stays true to its free and crunchy roots. barnabyvansun@gmail.com